Postcards

Power Point: Form your own family

"We were considered carpetbaggers. The other bankers wouldn't let us in their circle and certainly not in their country clubs. So we formed a family with our own associates. It was us against the world."

--Ken Lewis, Chairman and CEO of Bank of America (BAC), from a 2005 Fortune profile by Shawn Tully. Lewis shocked the financial world for a second time this year, announcing Sunday that BofA would acquire Merrill MORE

Power Point: Work hard and be humble

"The key to success in the financial sector, which is probably no different than any other field, is to work hard, to be humble, to work well with other people."

--John Thain, Chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch (ML), who is selling the company to Bank of America (BAC) for $50 billion. Wall Street observers have been commenting about the stark difference between Thain -- the newcomer chief who is salvaging MORE

A top Lehman exec's lament

"It didn't have to go this way," a devastated Barbara Byrne, a vice chairman at Lehman Brothers (LEH), told me this morning. Like a lot of senior folks at the now-bankrupt firm, she spent most of the weekend at the office, hoping, praying, and consoling the rank and file. "Talking to a single mother of two, a secretary, in tears is the hardest thing," she said.

She's right that the fall MORE

Corporate directors harder to find than ever

"Board searches are harder than ever. Ever!" The king of the Fortune 500 CEO headhunters, Tom Neff, said so over breakfast Wednesday morning at the Core Club in Manhattan.

Neff is U.S. chairman of Spencer Stuart, the firm that dominates the market for U.S. board searches. Spencer Stuart has recruited directors for giants like Wal-Mart (WMT), IBM (IBM), AIG (AIG), and General Motors (GM). In his spare time, Neff has conducted CEO MORE

Most Powerful Women reach out globally

Men think about power vertically -- and focus on rank and status and size. Women think about power horizontally -- it's largely about influence. I know I'm in trouble already. This is a stereotype, indeed. But in more than a decade of asking women leaders -- and the men they work with -- how they define power, I've discovered this to be an remarkably consistent truth. My favorite definition of MORE

Wall Street's under-the-radar CEO

I saw Brady Dougan last evening. He's the under-the-radar CEO of one of the financial world's quietest giants, Credit Suisse Group (CS). The company's cocktail reception, hosted by Dougan at New York's Chelsea Art Museum, was off the record, so I can't tell you what we talked about. But I can tell you that this young chief sure seems to have grown into the big job. I spent time with MORE

Most Powerful Women go global

Women exercise power horizontally. I've said this often -- in speeches about leadership and at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, an annual event that I chair. This horizontal slant spurs women leaders to reach beyond the jobs they're hired to do.

Want proof? In May, 40 top female executives in the U.S. -- all participants in the Fortune Summit -- spent two and half weeks mentoring rising stars from 24 MORE